The First Official Promo for The Conners Is Here, & They’re Better Than Ever

Time to breathe a sigh of relief! The first promo for The Conners has been released, and the beloved sitcom family seems every bit as endearing as they always have been.

After the original series star and creator Roseanne Barr was fired following a racist tweet earlier this year, the fate of the Roseanne reboot hung in the balance. But since the reboot-spinoff, The Conners, got the go-ahead, fans have been waiting with bated breath to see how the series will look sans Barr.

If the first promo is anything to go by, it looks like ABC won't pretend like there's not an elephant in the room. In the first few moments of the promo, a narrator states, “Tuesday, Oct. 16, there’s one thing on everyone’s mind.” When Laurie Metcalf’s Jackie laments, “There’s no place for the corn-holders,” the narrator quips, “No, that ain’t it.”

The big question, according to the narrator, is, “What’s next for the Conners?” And that’s spot on. What is next for America’s favorite blue-collar sitcom family now that their matriarch is gone?

A post shared by The Conners (@theconnersabc) on Sep 18, 2018 at 1:21pm PDT

While the promo doesn’t address how the character of Roseanne will be written out, it does show the family moving forward.

As the song “Life Is a Highway” blares in the background, the clip shows Dan, Darlene, Becky, D.J., Jackie and the rest of the gang doing everything from playing cards to singing in church together. At one point, Jackie tells Darlene they need to discuss plans for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas — to which Darlene responds, “Oh, I say we follow the Conners’ tradition and spend every dime we have on Halloween and have nothing to be thankful for or buy gifts with.”

Yep, sounds like the Conners are officially back!

In regard to the fate of Barr’s character, former costar John Goodman seemed to imply in an August interview with The Sunday Times that the family matriarch will be killed off. When asked how his character will be in The Conners, Goodman said, “I guess he’ll be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead.” This seemed to be confirmed later by Barr during an appearance on Brandon Straka’s YouTube show, #WalkAway, in September, when she gave even more details: “Oh, yeah, they killed her. They have her die of an opioid overdose.”